Expedition: Oden Southern Ocean 2009/10

Yesterday morning we rounded Cape Horn, and woke up to the sight of land. It is warm outside, maybe 11 °C, and despite the relatively mild temperatures we enjoyed during the expedition to Pine Island Bay, it now feels almost tropical. It is amazing to think that only three days south of here lies a continent covered in ice.

A few days ago we left our main work area in the Amundsen Sea and started our long transect towards Punta Arenas in Chile. The plan is now to sneak between two major low pressure systems and to cross over to South America without being hit by one of the major storm systems that are always moving around Antarctica.

One important goal of our investigations of the history of Pine Island Bay is to find remains of marine organisms that once lived in those water.

Greetings from Pine Island Bay, West Antarctica! Today, like all other days on this trip, has been extremely busy and exciting.

I am a marine geology graduate student at Rice University, USA, studying the retreat history of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. The main focus of our cruise on the Oden is to find material, shells or other former living things, to radiocarbon date.

The everyday life for organisms in Antarctic waters is harsh, not only due to low temperatures, but also due to occasional extremely high levels of ultraviolet radiation (UV). Just as humans, organisms face this threat by either UV-protections, such as photoprotective pigments, or by moving into the shade during periods with high radiation.

Today is day three of sitting in the tail end of a low-pressure system that we are waiting to pass. For the past two days we had to resist the urge to put our coring and CTD equipment in the water due to choppy seas and gusting winds.

There are a lot of uncertainties; all of the future and a lot of the past. One, however, tends to believe one’s own eyes and what has been seen gets largely accepted as true.

It is a gray and foggy Monday, and we are sailing through Amundsen Sea on our way to Pine Island Bay. We had hoped to arrive there today and to start coring, but we got delayed due to the winds last night which prevented us from going at the speeds we had liked to.

Vi har sedan några dagar lämnat hamnen i McMurdo och är nu på väg österut mot Pine Island Bay.

At the moment we have struck out from McMurdo a ways into the open seas and the major events outside at this point are the large icebergs that drift slowly past. They are an impressive sight to see, and come in all shapes and sizes.

Nu har äntligen hela gruppen anlänt till McMurdo. De resterande deltagarna kom från Christchurch häromdagen i en C17, som lågt sniffade över Oden innan den landade på Pegasus Airfield, McMurdo. Sedan kördes vi alla ut i bandvagnar direkt till Oden, som låg förtöjd vid isen.

Någonstans i översättning blev det nog fel. För vår franske helikopterpilot på 45 minutersturen ut till Taylor Valley, fick för sig att vi skulle ut och fiska upp pyttesmå humrar i sjöarna där ute.

Första dagarna här nere har varit fyllda av olika genomgångar, en massa möten och utbildningar. Prova och hämta utrustning. Väga utrustning. Lämna utrustning. Följt av lite mer planeringsmöten och genomgångar.

Vi gick upp lite efter 4 för att vara på flygplatsen vid 6 så att vi skulle hinna packa ihop vår utrustning, checka in, klara av säkerhetskontroll, passkontroll, tull, och inte minst att klä på oss alla de kläder som krävs för att man ska få flyga söderöver. Lite efter 8 var det tänkt att vi skulle lyfta och äntligen påbörja sista etappen på vår resa till Antarktis.